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It is with a heavy heart that I make this announcement, but as of today, Bardsworth will no longer be updating. While I don’t want to say that it’s for good, I have no intentions of returning to it in the forseeable future. This was not a decision that was made lightly, but rather something that has been brewing for a long time now.

Bardsworth was always intended to one day be my full-time job. Sure, it was absolutely a creative outlet for me and one that I enjoyed, but from the very beginning my dream was to make enough money from it so that I wouldn’t have to work any other jobs. Nearly twelve years later that still hasn’t happened, and I’m working two part-time jobs while being a stay-at-home father for two children. I’ve been stressed out trying to get updates out, as well trying to keep up with Patreon rewards that people are paying to get. And, unfortunately, I can’t do it all. So something needed to get put to rest, and I made the very difficult decision that it needed to be Bardsworth.

While Bardsworth will lay fallow for an indeterminate amount of time, I do want to assure everyone that I don’t plan on abandoning it completely. I won’t tease you and say that I’ll continue the webomic because, frankly, I don’t know if I will. I need to spend some time away from it. But I do want to continue writing the Bardsworth novels. I feel like the story can be better told in prose than in a webcomic.

Now, I have been on the other side of this. I’ve been reading webcomics for much longer than I’ve been making them, and I always hated when a creator would stop updating in the middle of a story without any kind of closure. I owe you guys more than just a full stop, so I’m giving you that closure. I put together an outline of major plot points from the point that I’m leaving off of the comic all the way to the ending. Keep in mind two things before reading it, though.

1.) Nothing is 100% canon. These are all things that I wanted to do, but in the course of writing the actual scenes, things might have ended up differently, or they might not have ended up in the story at all. I’ve had quite a few “deleted scenes” and ideas never fully used in the past, and it probably would have continued happening.

2.) Since I do intend on continuing to write Bardsworth as a series of novels, I have to warn you that if you plan on reading them, you will possibly encounter spoilers for future stories.

Those points being made, if you want to download the PDF and read it, get it here.

Lastly, I wanted to say thank you to each and every one of you. Some of you have been here from the beginning, some are new. Some of you have given me support in the form of money, some of you have given me support in the form of encouraging words. And I treasure each one of you. Bardsworth never would have made it this far without you. So thank you so, so much for everything.

To the next great adventure! The plate might be empty for a moment, but who knows what kinds of cookies will be on it in the future.

As many of you know, my family’s home life is usually in a state of constant flux. With both myself and Katie being creative people, our job situations tend to change often, and then when outside forces enter into the equation, it’s chaos. And it has been chaos since December when Katie lost a really good job. Since then we’ve been surviving, but barely. In order to try to catch up and get ourselves out of a little bit of debt, I’ve taken on a part time job in the evenings.

So why am I telling you all of this? Because it will definitely affect Bardsworth. As of my return in September (the exact date of which is still to be determined), updates will no longer be on a set schedule. Currently, I’ve been posting on Thursdays every week, but I can’t promise that anymore. So the updates will, to be blunt, be done when they’re done.

But because of the miracle of social media, it should be easy to be alerted when the newest page is posted. If you aren’t following me on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, make sure you connect. I even post on Tumblr (but I don’t think anyone really uses that anymore). If there is enough demand, I can even do an email list and send the page directly to you, but I’m not going to set that up if only a few of you want that. So let me know.

I am sorry about this. It sucks for me as much as it does for you (probably more so). But I’m going to try my hardest to keep bringing you quality pages and to keep the story moving as quickly as I can.

Patrons – there will be a similar but separate message for you over at Patreon.

I wanted to ask you guys a very important question, as it will help determine the direction that Bardsworth moves in the future. It would help me greatly if you took the time to answer the poll, and if you’d like to leave further clarification in the comments, please do. So…

July 27th will be my last update until September. I came to this decision a while back for several reasons…

1.) It’s no secret that my life has been crazy of late, and that this has affected my update schedule on a regular basis. Things will only continue to be crazy throughout August, so it made sense to back off of the comic for a bit.

2.) I would like to use a chunk of time to work on the third Bardsworth book, and it seemed like a good idea that since I’m taking time off of the comic itself, I should use some of that time to hack away at the book.

3.) I’m going on a very, very, very much needed week-long vacation at the end of August and I didn’t want to stress myself out by trying to be on deadline while also trying to enjoy my time with my family.

Those of you who are patrons will still get updates of sorts. I will be posting the colored pages for the third book, as well as any new updates that I can get around to doing. This is, of course, in addition to regular Patreon rewards.

It’s been a while since I took a long hiatus like this, but I figure most people are pretty busy in the summer time, so it shouldn’t be that bad. If you really miss me, drop me a line. I’m always willing to chat with my loyal readers. Otherwise, I’ll see you in September!

It’s been a long time since I even really thought about doing a t-shirt. My t-shirts just don’t really sell, and I always end up with leftover merchandise. But I figured it doesn’t hurt to at least see if people would be interested in a new design. So I’m setting up a poll!

This t-shirt would be based on a wallpaper I did for my Patreon subscribers this past year (image below). I would probably remove the Francis horns from the top portion so that people who don’t know the comic wouldn’t be too confused. But otherwise, hypothetically, would you pre-order this t-shirt if I made it official?

(Note: If you voted on the Facebook page, please don’t vote again here.)